Education has certainly changed since I was in grammar school! Yes, it was called “grammar school” when I was a youngster. I’m a product of an education system that did not attempt to modify instruction to match student learning styles. I was a “receiver of knowledge” and was rarely given opportunities for exploration and discussion. Life was much simpler then. Teachers taught, mostly through lectures, and students learned — and behaved! The adults in my life were strict, but I always felt loved and secure.
I cannot remember how I first learned to read, but I do remember listening to Mama tell stories, read books, and sing songs. My parents lived through the Great Depression and taught school during that era. My mother was a “city girl,” having grown up in Decatur, but my father was a “country boy” from an area outside Rome, Georgia, near Berry College. Those were the only cultures I knew about as a young girl. Daddy sold World Book encyclopedias to bring in extra money, and he had a special volume that contained a sample of all that World Book had to offer. I remember looking at that book for hours on end because I was so fascinated with it, especially with the color pictures of animals and clothing from around the world, and the plastic overlays that showed the human skeleton and muscles. My parents didn’t help me with homework because I was just expected to do it on my own, along with family chores that my six siblings and I were told to do. Education was important in our family, and we were all expected to eventually go to college. I was taught responsibility and discipline at home, but those traits were also reinforced at school.
My mother was in college while I was in the elementary grades. I remember seeing her read a book by John Dewey (or maybe I remember it because I’ve seen it somewhere at her house), so she must have been learning about progressivism. She told me once that I could actually punish my sister for cutting the hair off one of my dolls! That must have come from a child psychology class she was taking at the time! I remember when Sputnik was launched, and how Russia and Kruschev were such enemies of America. In school, we were told we had to start using the “new math” but I never knew what was wrong with the old math. I remember what I was doing the day Kennedy was shot, and was shocked and even scared that something like that could happen in our country. I also recall the day we finally put a man on the moon, winning the space race against Russia. Through all of that, I was never aware of changes in my education. I never worked in cooperative groups or even with a partner, but I wrote term papers, studied French and Latin, and learned geometry and algebra.
I realize that teaching is political; in fact, our lives are being shaped by political forces, whether we agree with the prevailing ideology or not. Much has happened in our education system since I was a child that can be applauded, but there is no definitive “right” way to produce an educated citizenry. As Rhina pointed out in our class summary last week, “There are different and equally effective ways of learning, knowing, and doing.”
